The fourth season of Comedy Central's series Workaholics continues to follow the exploits of Blake Henderson (Blake Anderson), Adam DeMamp (Adam DeVine) and Anders Homvik (Anders Holm), a trio of roommates who work together in a call center for the TelAmeriCorp corporation. Like a lot of guys in their twenties, they're still prone to drinking too much, smoking a lot of weed and going after girls at inopportune times and like the three seasons before this latest, much of the stories revolve around those misadventures. At work they answer to Alice Murphy (Maribeth Monroe), a stern woman who understandably becomes impatient with their constant slacking and attitude problems. When they're not at work they often hang out with their friend Karl Hevacheck (Kyle Newacheck), a pot dealer who tends to come up with one hair-brained scheme after another.

The thirteen episodes that make up Workaholics: Season Four are spread out across the two Blu-ray discs in the set as follows:

DISC ONE:

Orgazmo Birth: The season kicks off with a story in which the guys get ready to attend an electronic music festival and hope to score a solid supply of ecstasy but they need their co-worker Montez Walker (Erik Griffin) to get it for them. His wife wants him to stay home for a baby-shower so they throw a party in his backyard to distract her from all of this.

Fry Guys: The guys are bored at work and decide that what they need to do in order to brighten up the office is to have a fish fry. There's only one thing standing in the way of making that happening… Alice. So, how to get her out of the picture? Try to convince someone to have sex with her!

Snackers: Snacks in the lunch room are a big deal to everyone, particularly those who partake of a certain herbal smoke more than others. When it comes time to decide who gets to lord over the lunch room and control the snacks, the guys disagree and try to call an election to decide.

Miss BS: Fairly randomly, our three intrepid employees run into a TV news journalist who specializes in shining the light on the dark corners of business scams. Not being the sharpest tools in the drawer, they shoot their mouths off and wind up getting the office into trouble with her.

Three And A Half Men: In what would quite possibly be the worst business decision ever made, Alice puts the guys in charge of creating a promotional video to help advertise TelAmeriCorp to prospective clients. Adam's decides they should make a revealing documentary about his personal ability to eat hotdogs while Ders wants it to focus on Karl who has come up with an idea to have his own penis surgically attached to Blake's own member.

Brociopath: The guys are having a house party but it's not going off the way that they want it to. Just as it looks like it's going to fizzle out and die, the one man who can turn this into a rager shows up: Stan Halen (Will Greenburg). As soon as he shows up, his dumb frat boy antics get the three guys riled up, but soon he starts to annoy them and he might just prove to be too much of a good thing.

We Be Clownin': The three guys decide that they want a pool slide but in order to get that, they'll need to pay for it. So to make this happen, they take jobs as clowns and provide horribly inappropriate entertainment at children's parties.

DISC TWO:

Beer Heist: The guys, with some help from Karl, decide to break into a brewery and steal as much beer as they can. Along the way they wind up giving a trio of college girls a lift and with promises of beer, figure they're going to get to party with them. Nothing goes as planned.

Best Buds: Karl, enterprising young man that he is, decides to open up a burrito shop. Before you know it, the three guys are working with him and there's a whole lot of weed floating around. As the shop becomes popular very quickly, conflict arises as to who's in charge and who is really the better worker.

Time Chair: When they guys luck out and wind up being offered a free massage chair, each one of them wants it and neither of them are willing to budge as to where they want the chair kept in the house. So they decide to settle this once and for all with a race.

The One Where the Guys Play Basketball and Do the "Friends" Title Thing: TelAmeriCorp decides to boost moral by having a basketball competition. The prize? A trip to Reno, Nevada and use of the company car to get there. They figure they've got this nailed until Blake quits and Adam injures himself and winds up in the emergency room.

DeputyDong: The guys love online gaming but sadly, there are others out there in the gaming world better than they. One such opponent that they encounter goes by the ID of ‘DeputyDong' and after he taunts them so fiercely, they decide to try to find him and pay him back.

Friendship Anniversary: Our heroes realize that they've been living together for seven years…

This series has a lot to recommend but this fourth season is definitely more uneven than the three that came before it. Whereas earlier in the show the three guys had very distinct personalities that would not only conflict but tend to balance one another out, here that's less pervasive and as such, there are moments where they feel completely interchangeable. We see Alice's personality become less unique here as well, as she seems to soften up a bit and becomes less of a nemesis for the guys so much as she is just a plot device. Most of the stories still work and they're still packed with plenty of gags and loads of jokes of varying degrees of both effectiveness and crassness (particularly in the uncut form that they are presented in on this Blu-ray), but the series doesn't feel as fresh as it once did.

As it is with any comedy series, there are going to be plenty of opportunities for personal preference in what constitutes ‘funny' to play into everyone's individual take on the material, but there are a few standout episodes here, and a few clunkers as well. We Be Clownin' and Brociopath both work pretty well. They take the guys out of the typical office setting and show them doing more than just smoking pot around the house (which, oddly enough, is what a lot of the classic episodes of the superior first two seasons revolve around) but they feel at least like kindred spirits to the earlier material. Best Buds is also pretty funny but admittedly it relies a lot more on gross-out humor than some of the other storylines do. These contrast with stinkers though, as episodes like DeputyDong feel like a waste of potential and stories like the one told in Beer Heist, while mildly amusing, feel very contrived and predictable. Some of the scripts here feel like they were written for the lowest common denominator and from a formulaic sensibility.

Having written all of that, the show is still slightly more hit than miss. Fans of the series will want it and appreciate it. The characters can still be interesting and funny in the better stories and some of the situations that they find themselves in are so ridiculous that you can't help but at least want to know where the plot will go even if it might not have you rolling on the floor with laughter.

The Blu-ray:

Video:

Workaholics: Season Four arrives on Blu-ray framed in its 1.78.1 widescreen broadcast aspect ratio in AVC encoded 1080p high definition. It looks a little better on Blu-ray than it does on HD cable, showing maybe a tad more depth and dimensionality here than on TV. Like a lot of cable shows shot on high definition digital video it looks a little bit flat but colors are pretty decent and typically pretty lifelike. Detail in close up shots is fine, fat better than standard definition, and a decent bit rate keeps the image free of compression artifacts. If you're familiar with the look of the show, you should be more than happy with the video quality on this Blu-ray release.

Sound:

The English language Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio is also pretty decent. There isn't a constant flurry of surround activity here but music and effects do frequently come at you from the rear channels you're your subwoofer will give out a few decent kicks when the content calls for it. Dialogue stays clean and clear and easy to follow and the levels are properly balanced as well. There are no issues with any hiss or distortion and generally the audio shapes up nicely here. An optional English language Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo mix is also offered.

Extras:

Extras are slim, limited to a selection of deleted and alternate scenes (10:36) and a few minutes of outtakes (10:57). There are also 1:24 worth of promo spots for Season Four. It would have been nice to get some cast or crew interviews but that didn't happen. Animated menus also offer up episode selection. The Drunkmentaries commentary tracks that were on the last set? None of those here, sadly.

Final Thoughts:

Workaholics: Season Four tries to expand on things by taking a lot of the action and insanity out of the office setting. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. If you've enjoyed the series this far in, you'll get a kick out of the content assembled for this fourth release but if you're just dipping your toes in for the first time, start with the earlier seasons as they're more consistent. The audio and video quality on this two-disc Blu-ray set is pretty decent if not quite mindblowing, but the extras are slim. Recommended for fans, as there's still a lot of fun to be had here.

Ian lives in NYC with his wife where he writes for DVD Talk, runs Rock! Shock! Pop!. He likes NYC a lot, even if it is expensive and loud.